1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus which can simultaneously deal with a plurality of recordable/reproducible media such as hard disks or recordable/reproducible DVDs (digital versatile disks) and a picture recording reservation method of this recording/reproducing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, optical disk reproducing apparatuses which can reproduce optical disks having data such as video pictures and audio recorded thereon and deal with moving pictures have been developed. As the optical disk reproducing apparatus, for example, laser disk (LD), video compact disk (CD) reproducing apparatuses are provided. The user can appreciate film software and enjoy karaoke and the like by use of the above apparatuses.
In the field of the optical disk and the application technique thereof, a DVD standard is proposed. In the DVD standard, an MPEG2 (Moving Picture Expert Group 2) system which is internationally standardized is used for compression of video signals and an AC3 audio compression system is used for audio.
That is, the DVD standard supports the MPEG2 system for the moving picture compression system according to an MPEG2 system layer and supports the AC3 audio compression system and MPEG audio compression system for the audio compression system. Further, as captions of movies, karaoke and the like, sub-video data having bit map data subjected to run-length compression can be dealt with based on the DVD standard. Further, in the DVD standard, control data (navigation pack) is defined so as to attain special reproduction such as fast forwarding and fast reversing in the reproducing apparatus.
In addition, in the DVD standard, the standards of IS09660 and micro UDF are supported so that data of the disk can be read out by computers.
Further, as the standards of media themselves, the standard (2.6 GB) of a DVD-RAM is also completed following on the standard of a DVD-ROM which is a medium of the DVD-video and DVD-RAM drives having also been popularized as computer peripheral devices.
At present, the DVD video standard which realizes a system capable of recording/reproducing information on a real-time basis, that is, the standard of an RTR (Real Time Recorder)-DVD is being completed by use of the DVD-RAM and the test operation is scheduled to be completed in the near future.
The standard is considered based on the standard of the DVD-ROM which is now sold. Further, a file system corresponding to the RTR-DVD is also now standardized.
On the other hand, a system which records and reproduces broadcast signals by utilizing a hard disk device (hard disk drive: HDD) contained in the recording/reproducing apparatus is also considered. In the hard disk device, data of 100 Gbytes or more can be recorded.
When the above hard disk device and DVD system are independently considered, both of them have advantages and disadvantages.
In the case of the hard disk device, it is contained in the recording/reproducing apparatus in the normal service condition and cannot be taken out. Therefore, it is impossible to store data limitlessly. The remaining amount of the recording area will become insufficient in the future. Further, it is impossible for the user to easily take the hard disk device out of the recording/reproducing apparatus. Therefore, it is impossible to take out the hard disk and reproduce data recorded on the hard disk by use of another apparatus.
On the other hand, in the case of the recordable/reproducible DVD, the storage capacity is small in comparison with the hard disk. It is impossible to record copy protected information. However, in the case of the DVD, it is removable with respect to the recording/reproducing apparatus.